The present invention relates to a tire building machine, particularly to a tire building machine in which beads are supplied automatically to a bead ring of a bead setter on the head stock side when building green tires by means of a tire building device.
In general, a tire building machine comprises a band building device, a tire building device and a band transfer device moving these two devices. In more detail, the band building device is for building unvulcanized rubber bands by collecting and adhering unvulcanized rubber sheets or rubber containing cords on its building drum. The band transfer device transfers this rubber band to the building drum of the tire building device. The tire building device receives the rubber band thus transferred by the band transfer device on its building drum, attaches a bead to either end of the rubber band, and then builds a green tire, that is, an unvulcanized intermediate tire. This tire building device includes the building drum positioned in the center and two bead setters on the both sides thereof, that is, on the head stock side and on the tail stock side.
In the building of the above-mentioned kind of green tire by means of the tire building device having this construction, it is necessary to preliminarily set the bead at the bead ring of the bead setter on the head stock side prior to mounting the rubber band on the building drum by means of the band transfer device. This is because once the rubber band is mounted on the building drum, the rubber band having a relatively large diameter becomes an obstacle for the bead passing over the outer periphery of the building drum to the bead setter on the head stock side.
According to the prior art, beads are supplied to the bead setter on the head stock side manually by an operator. For carrying out this bead supply to the bead setter, however, only a very short period of time is permitted for the operator within one cycle of building one green tire, that is, between the time when the green tire in the precedent cycle is removed from the building drum of the tire building device and the time when the rubber band for a green tire in the subsequent cycle is mounted on the building drum. In addition to the bead supply operation thus restricted in time, the operator is usually very busy with the main operator of the machine itself, and also with a number of preparatory operations such as the removing the bead from a rack, mounting a sidewall on an applier and putting the thus built tires in order. Accordingly, the main operation as well as the other preparatory operations mentioned above are obliged to receive unfavorable influence by the time-restricted operation which naturally takes priority. As a result of this, the time required for one cycle of operation is elongated, which decreases the workability.